Starbreeze cuts costs after Overkill’s The Walking Dead disappoints

Starbreeze has resolved to tighten its belt after Overkill’s The Walking Dead failed to live up to sales expectations.

The Swedish developer, renowned for games like The Chronicles of Riddick, The Darkness and Payday, announced in a financial press release that Overkill’s The Walking Dead, a co-operative zombie-first-person shooter which is its most recent game, has so far failed to generate the anticipated revenue: “We will not be able to recognize the license fee from 505 Games for Overkill’s The Walking Dead as revenue until after the end of the fourth quarter, while initial sales revenues from the game are lower than expected.”

It attributed part of the blame for that to the need to charge less for games in certain countries: “Initial sales revenues from Overkill’s The Walking Dead are lower than forecasted, primarily because the share of sales in low-price countries, such as China and Russia, is significantly higher than expected.”

As a result, Starbreeze says it will rein in costs: “The board of directors has given management a mandate to review the cost of operations, and a program to reduce costs and sharpen focus on core business has been initiated.”

But the company is adamant it remains committed to Overkill’s The Walking Dead. Starbreeze Chairman Michael Hjorth said: “This is disappointing, of course, but we have a base to work with in regards to the number of games sold. We have a pulse of concurrent players, which is essential to future performance within the framework of our Games as a Service concept. The team is working at full capacity to deliver improvements to the game and new content, and Season 2 will be starting soon.”

For further news about Overkill’s The Walking Dead, keep an eye on its website.

Steve Boxer has been writing about videogames since the early 1990s. His first console was an Atari VCS, and he misspent most of his youth in the 1980s in the arcades. As well as for Green Man Gaming, he can be found writing for The Guardian, Empire, TechRadar and Pocket-Lint. He’s currently having trouble deciding whether his favourite console is his Xbox One X or his Switch, and plays a wide range of games, but especially RPGs (he loves a good JRPG) action-adventure titles, shooters of all descriptions and driving games. Follow him here.